Hillary Clinton With Indira Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News
Inteview With Indira Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News
Interview
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
U.S. Consulate
Vladivostok, Russia
September 9, 2012
QUESTION:
Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for joining us today for Bloomberg
Radio. I wanted to start out by asking you about the Haqqani Network
which you decided to blacklist. The Taliban who harbored al-Qaida in
Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks have never been blacklisted.
Should they be next?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we
do very intensive analysis before we designate someone as a foreign
terrorist organization, and I think I’ll let the designation speak for
itself. We have reached that conclusion about the Haqqani Network and we
think it’s the right decision.
QUESTION: The
U.S. already targets the Haqqanis for combat and drone operations, and
also the assets of their sanction leaders. So what difference will this
blacklist make? And is it about sending a message to Pakistan that
they’re not doing enough?
SECRETARY CLINTON: No.
It is about squeezing them in the ways that now are available to us
under the designation and the Executive Order. It gives us much greater
reach into any financial assets or fundraising that they may engage in,
gives us better traction against assets that they might own. So we think
it adds to the pressure on the Haqqanis, and it’s part of the
continuing effort to try to send a message to them – not to anybody
else, but to them – because of the really incredibly damaging attacks
that they have waged against us, against other targets, and inside
Afghanistan. And it’s important that we use every tool at our disposal
to go after them.
QUESTION: On Iran, nuclear
negotiations have ground to a halt despite increasing noises out of
Israel about a possible preemptive military strike. The EU is now
talking about new sanctions. What’s the game-changer here? Does the U.S.
need to state more explicit redlines to persuade Iran to take the deal
that was offered and to reassure Israel to hold off from a military
strike?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we’ve
maintained a steady course of our two-pronged policy. We have always
said every option was on the table, but we believe in the negotiation,
the diplomatic effort through the P-5+1, but also pressure. And we are
working to increase that pressure. The sanctions, we know, are having an
effect. The efforts that the P-5+1 have made to pin Iran down on what
exactly they are willing to do are still underway, and we will be having
some meetings in the next month in New York and elsewhere to take stock
of where we are. So I think it’s a very challenging effort to get them
to move in a way that complies with their international obligations, but
we believe that is still, by far, the best approach to take at this
time.
QUESTION: Is there a deadline?
SECRETARY CLINTON:
We’re not setting deadlines. We’re watching very carefully about what
they do, because it’s always been more about their actions and their
words.
QUESTION: Right. The Israelis, of course,
have their own timeline and their own deadlines in their mind. What are
the latest that you’re hearing from them privately beyond what’s coming
out in the media about their willingness to wait for negotiations to
have time to work?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t
think that there’s any difference in their public and their private
concerns. I mean, they feel that it would be an existential threat if
Iran were a nuclear-weaponized state. And no nation can abdicate their
self-defense if they feel that they’re facing such a threat.
Our
message has been very clear, and the Israelis have supported us through
the last three and a half years, that we had to unite the international
community, we had to put the most intensive sanctions we could possibly
get, both through the international community and then unilateral by the
United States, by the Europeans, and others. And they really have
recognized, in all of our conversations, that these sanctions are making
a difference. They’re more anxious about a quick response because they
feel that they’re right in the bull’s eye, so to speak, if this doesn’t
end up changing Iranian behavior and their nuclear weapons program. But
we’re convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to
do everything we can to bring Iran to a good faith negotiation.
QUESTION:
You’ve traveled more than any of your predecessors, particularly in
Asia, focusing here on new institutional frameworks like TPP, ASEAN,
Mekong Delta initiative. Does this reflect a view on your part that U.S.
power is changing or has to change? And are there different ways in
which it should be wielded?
SECRETARY CLINTON:
Well, it reflects a view that I think is rooted in American exercise of
power. We have always understood the value of both unilateral and
bilateral actions and multilateral actions. And we spent 50 years after
the end of the Second World War building the architecture for the global
economic community, for the Euro-Atlantic coalition, NATO, and other
commitments. We’ve strongly supported the European Union. We spent a lot
of diplomatic time and effort creating those institutional arrangements
and embedding ourselves in them. And I thought it was time that we did
the same in Asia because these countries are increasingly playing a
major role – not just China, but Indonesia, as a member of the G-20, as
is Japan and South Korea. We’re increasingly working economically,
politically, strategically with Singapore and Malaysia. We’re very
involved with Australia and New Zealand.
You go down the list and
it struck me that we needed to begin to knit together the region and
America’s role in it, and there were existing organizations such as
ASEAN, the East Asia Summit, that the United States had never really
committed to. We’d show up once a year, go to some dinner, do a funny
skit, show up again a year later, and I don’t think that’s adequate for
the importance of this region and our role in it. And so reasserting our
Asia Pacific presence meant making sure that we were involved in both
our traditional alliances, but also in the organizations that the
countries themselves valued. And I think that has been an important
decision and proving itself to be.
QUESTION:
Short last question: Getting China policy right, the balance between
firmness and friendliness, is something every administration learns on
the job. So what have you learned on how to deal with Beijing, and
what’s your advice to your successor?
SECRETARY CLINTON:
I think you have to be yourself. You have to be America. You have to
stand up for American values, interests, and security. You have to look
for ways to deepen understanding and to find common ground wherever
that’s possible, to work on enhancing the level of cooperation, but also
to stand up for what we believe in. I mean, we’ve come a long way doing
that, and we can’t in any way subordinate that.
So it’s always –
but Indira, that’s true with any country. I mean, we don’t agree on
everything with anybody. We just went through a – what was it, a lobster
crisis with Canada a few weeks ago. I mean, we’re always balancing, as
you say, friendliness and firmness. That’s true with everybody. It’s
just China is a very large presence, now the second biggest economy in
the world. So what we do with China is always going to be very carefully
followed and analyzed. So the methods are not so dissimilar. The
challenges at this point in time are much more front and center because
of the growing importance of the role that China’s playing economically
and politically.
So I think it’s being aware of how you strike the
right approach with all of these countries, and so everything we’ve
done has been to construct a framework of cooperation in the region with
China, ensuring our presence and our position now and into the future.
And I think we’ve put the relationship on a firm foundation, and it’s
been proven because we’ve had some choppy waters, but we have been
resilient, and we have been very clear in expressing concerns that we
have. And I think that’s the sign of a maturing relationship.
QUESTION: Thank you so much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: You’re so welcome.
